


how wonderful life is while you're in the world

by Cafelesbian



Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A little, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Recovery, bc you know who I am, the fluffiest thing I will probably ever write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian
Summary: Set betweentell me how to breatheandeven in the dark. Steve and Bucky move to Brooklyn.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1428403
Comments: 13
Kudos: 67





	how wonderful life is while you're in the world

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I’m posting this at 11:30 on a Friday night what about it
> 
> Very few warnings bc I wrote smth happy for once but a little reference to abuse and rape, very mild

The penthouse looks bigger emptied out.

It reminds Steve, disturbingly, of his first night there. Bare and cold and impersonal, surreal, that a place like this can be emptied down to it’s foundation and sit, skeletal and gathering dust and waiting for the next wealthy family to pour into it.

Bucky squeezes his hand. “You alright?”

Steve shakes himself out of it, glancing over towards Bucky. “Yeah. I’m great.” He gives him a smile. Bucky returns it.

“Are you sad to leave?” Bucky asks him, fitting his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

That, Steve thinks, is home. No place will ever compare to Bucky’s skin, warm beside his, the smell of his shampoo or the quiver of his breath being so close Steve could touch it, shape it into something with gentle hands. No place will ever compare to Bucky’s fingers moving in soft rhythm over Steve’s, a pace that’s rooted in his soul, fitted there perfectly since the first time Bucky ever touched him, ancient and worn as eroded cliff sides, touch that he feels it and thinks music, or poetry, or art, poured into every painting he’s ever done.

“No,” Steve says truthfully. “Are you?”

Bucky hesitates. “No,” he says, “not exactly. I’ll miss the view.”

Steve gives a shrug of agreement, squeezing his hand again. “But,” he says with a grin, “I’ve still got the only view that matters.”

Bucky blushes faintly. “Original,” he says, giving Steve a shove, but his face glows. “C’mon, Nicholas Sparks.” Steve laughs, letting Bucky pull him to the elevator. “Good girl,” he says to Penny, as she trots happily alongside them. They haven’t had her a week yet, and Steve has only ever loved Bucky more than he loves her. It’s probably what having a kid is like, he’s decided.

He wonders if that makes them a family. Probably. Definitely. Steve smiles thinking about it.

“What?” Bucky says, catching the fond look he’s giving him.

“I just love you,” Steve tells him. Bucky presses his face into Steve’s neck, and Steve can feel him smiling.

***

They try to build the bed the first night. “We can do it ourselves,” Steve says. “It’ll be easy. Then we at least have a place to sleep tonight.”

“Whatever you say,” Bucky replies skeptically. They’ve got one couch settled, a few cups and plates and silverware, and nothing else. A bed seems like the reasonable next step.

Two and a half hours into the bed’s construction, beginning at eleven, it’s become clear that it is not, in fact, easy. They’ve laid and relaid the pieces out in a tentative outline about seven times, and none of the pieces fit together and they’re exhausted.

“Steve,” Bucky says, throwing the instructions down, “this is impossible. I can’t do it. We’re going to have to never have a bed.”

“It isn’t impossible,” Steve argues, looking up wearily. 

“Baby,” Bucky says, yawning. “I’m sleeping on the couch. We’ll make Scott come over and do it for us, I think he’s good at this stuff.”

“Buck,” Steve complains, “we got this. We’ll never hear the end of it if we make Scott do it.”

“I’m willing to make that sacrifice. C’mon, Stevie.” Bucky gets to his feet and grins. “You need a break. We both do. Let’s go downstairs, I want something to eat.”

“We’ve got no food,” Steve points out, following him downstairs.

“We’ve got potato chips,” Bucky replies, with a dismissive grin.

“Oh, my bad,” Steve says sarcastically. 

“I’m gonna put on some music, I’m just gonna shuffle all your stuff.”

“Knock yourself out,” Steve replies, then calls “Penny! C’mere, babe!” She trots in a moment later, and Steve gets to his knees to play tug of war with her rope toy, and Bucky smiles down at them before perching himself onto the counter and scrolling through Steve’s music.

“You have a playlist that’s just called B?” Bucky asks him, glancing up. “Do you have a crush on me or something, Rogers?”

Steve glances up from wrestling with Penny. “No idea what would give you that idea, babe.”

Bucky laughs and pounds shuffle. “Ooh, Elton,” he teases, “how sensitive of you.”

Steve grins, rolling his eyes. “I know for a fact that you love this song.” 

Bucky laughs. He looks so happy, Steve thinks, feeling his heart settle comfortably into his chest. He should always look like that.

“C’mere.” Steve holds his arms open, and Bucky pushes off the counter and treads towards him, tucking himself into his chest. Steve takes one hand, rests his chin on the top of Bucky’s head, and rocks a little, even and slow to the song, to _how wonderful life is while you’re in the world._

“How come,” Bucky asks him, head on his chest, “you don’t have any songs from this century?”

“What? I do,” Steve says defensively. Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“You do not have the music library of a twenty-three year old, Rogers. You’re an old man.” Steve pouts, and Bucky laughs. “Lot of Bruce, lot of Amy Winehouse, lot of U2. You’re like somebody’s father.” He pauses, grinning. “That forties song? Where do you even find this shit?”

“Feel free, at any point, to go get your phone,” Steve tells him. Bucky laughs again and leans back against him. 

“Nah, I like your weird music.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Jackass,” he says fondly.

“Idiot,” Bucky replies mildly, his voice warm.

“Jerk.”

“Punk.” Bucky pushes up on tiptoes to kiss him, easy and soft as slipping into a gentle sleep. Then, as the song ends and _It’s been a long, long time_ swells, he pulls apart and says, delighted with himself, “Case in point.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, kissing his forehead. Bucky smiles. 

“Hang on.” Bucky breaks away and digs through the fridge for a moment, then grabs their single champagne bottle.

“C’mon,” he says, holding it out triumphantly. “We should celebrate.”

Steve laughs, pulling him back in by the waist. “Celebrate the fact that we just spent two and a half hours not building a bed?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Celebrate that we bought a house, dumbass.”

“Our champagne flutes are still packed,” Steve points out, “and there’s no way I’m going searching for that.”

Bucky smirks, pulling away from him to open the cupboard and grab two mugs. “Don’t be so rigid,” he tells Steve. 

“Classy.” Steve snorts. Bucky grins, kissing him. Then he pulls away and pops it, the fog pouring urgently over, and looks thrilled with himself.

It doesn’t take much to get either of them drunk these days, so a half a bottle each gets them close enough. It’s nice, not the miserable half-conscious drunk that Steve is used to, just warm, soft edges and lightness that leaves him looking down into the mug and deciding he feels like the bubbles, warm and fizzing to the top. That’s what he always feels like with Bucky, like the bubbles in champagne. “Baby,” Steve says, grinning and downing the rest of his drink. “We’re never gonna get that bed finished.” They’re on the couch now, sitting close, a blanket wrapped around both of their shoulders.

Bucky giggles. “Nope. I’m calling Scott.”

“Now?” Steve says. That seems slightly off, although he can’t place why.

“Why not?” Bucky says, and that seems like a fair point. Bucky dials him, yawning again.

Scott sounds worried, which Steve would understand if he weren’t half drunk. Instead, he can’t work it out. “Bucky? You alright?”

“Scotty,” Bucky giggles into the phone. “Long time no see.”

“Hey, Bucky,” Scott answers. “What’s up, bud? Everything okay?”

“Scott!” Steve shouts, and Bucky laughs for some reason. 

“Steve,” Scott says, a little wearily. “Are you guys drunk?”

“You’re drunk,” Bucky answers, and they both burst out laughing.

On the other end, Scott chuckles, exasperated. “Do you guys need me to come get you from somewhere?”

“No,” Bucky says, laying down across Steve’s lap. “Nope, dad. We’re home.”

“So this is just a drunk call, then?”

“No.” Bucky yawns. “We need a favor.”

“I’m not hacking anyone else for you.”

“Scott,” Bucky chides, “that isn’t what this is. You know how to build stuff, right?”

Scott pauses. “Build stuff?”

“Yeah. You built Wanda’s couch.”

“Oh. Like assemble stuff? Yeah, sure.”

“So you’ll build our bed?” Bucky answers happily. Steve has started playing absently with his hair; it’s probably the prettiest hair in the world, the kind of hair people should be writing poetry about, soft and sweet and feeling like touching light. 

“Bucky, it’s four am,” Scott says.

“Not now,” Bucky tells him. “Tomorrow. Please?”

Silence. “Two grown men can’t figure out how to assemble an IKEA bed?”

“It’s a West Elm bed. I’m rich now, remember?” Bucky laughs for a minute, like it’s the greatest joke of all time. Scott snorts on the other end. “Please, Scott. Neither of us have dads to do it.” Steve is tipsy enough that the joke doesn’t make him sad.

Scott is not. “Fuck. Fine. I can come over at eleven tomorrow.”

Bucky grins, delighted. “I love you, Scotty.” He stretches out the _you_ , lets it roll on his tongue, like bubblegum or elastic. It’s cute when he does that. It’s cute when he does anything.

“Me too, Scott!” Steve calls, into the phone.

“Yeah, yeah, I love you both too. Don’t drive anywhere, dumbass.” He’s exasperatedly fond as he hangs up.

They fall asleep on the couch, tucked under the same blanket, pleasantly tipsy, holding each other.

***

The first time Bucky has a nightmare in the new place is the fourth night, and it jars him more than usual. The content is the same, the horror movie pain and the terror so vivid he thinks it could stop his heart, but it is worsened by waking up in a bed he isn’t used to, the lighting flat and unfamiliar, the arms around him not immediately recognizable. In his panic, he jerks away from Steve and braces his arms around himself, whimpering.

“You’re okay, Buck,” Steve says, voice soft, not moving in to touch him. “It’s just a bad dream, we’re at our new place in Brooklyn, you’re alright.” Bucky blinks and shudders. Penny nuzzles at his side.

“Stop,” Bucky whispers, “please don’t make me, please—”

“Sh, baby, hey.” Steve’s voice is pained. “It’s just me, it’s Steve. I’m not gonna hurt you, never gonna make you do anything, yeah? You’re okay.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, blinking and wincing, still disoriented.

“Yeah, baby, it’s just me. I’m right here.” Bucky blinks again, then nods. “Can I touch you?” He nods again, letting his head fall against Steve’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, “I’m right here, you’re okay, we’re safe, yeah?”

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbles. He had hoped, idiotically, that maybe a new home would wipe his slate clean too, would straighten out all of the knots inside of him just by allowing him to exist somewhere new, somewhere that’s his and Steve’s. He had known it wouldn’t, but he has still hoped.

“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart.” Steve kisses his hair. “What do you need, love? Want some tea? Waffles?”

Bucky laughs, soft and weak. “‘M okay.” He’s still shaking. Steve moves to turn the light on, and Bucky, pathetically, pulls him back in.

“Please don't leave,” he whispers. He’s still out of it just enough, hovering in that gray area where he isn’t quite calmed down yet and the thought of being left alone makes everything in him clench up.

“I’m not going anywhere, angel.” And he doesn’t. He holds Bucky for ten, twenty, thirty more minutes without moving or speaking, until Bucky stops trembling and the panic begins to drain.

“I don’t want—” Bucky swallows, feeling pathetic. “I don’t want to ruin this. Our, um, life together. And this week, and everything. I don’t want—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be, um, doing this now, when we just—just moved here.” Scattered around them, unpacked boxes and art leaned against the wall and half assembled furniture, beautiful things that Bucky can’t believe are his. The beauty of his life contrasts his past and his insides so vividly that he sometimes he wonders, sometimes, how the world even allows such a dichotomy to exist, how it doesn’t violate some universal law. He wants to deserve his.

“Hey,” Steve says gently, tilting his chin up. “Bucky, baby. How you’re feeling isn’t ever going to ruin anything, yeah? My life with you is the most—the most beautiful thing in the world. Every second with you. Including this. You’re never gonna ruin anything by feeling bad, okay?”

Bucky swallows hard. Steve, most of all, defies everything he should ever be able to have, to experience, to even exist in any capacity with.

But he has him. So Bucky pulls him in again and exhales, letting himself be held and loved, and when he drifts into sleep again, he feels warn and cherished and lucky.

***

“Steve?” Bucky says timidly one night, a few days after they moved in.

They’re in what will eventually be a studio. It’s bare, right now, a few small details filled in to pretend that they’ve got the unpacking under control; some books stacked on a shelf, a few pens of Steve’s in jars on his desk, but mostly it’s just an empty room that they’re going to literally paint and write their own story in.

“Yeah, baby?” As Steve’s talking, he rips scissors cleanly through the packing tape on whatever box he’s working on right now with a flourish. Bucky snorts.

“Um.” He pauses, rolling his shoulders back uncomfortably. “Are you really okay with all of this?”

Steve stops pulling out paintbrushes and looks up. “Hm?”

Bucky looks down, anxiety cranked up to a weak buzzing in his chest. “Just. Um. You really don’t mind that, uh, I’ve basically come into your life and taken over all your stuff? Like, the opposite of a divorce?” His tone is light, but he winces. Steve tilts his head.

“Baby, no. Of course not. We’ve talked about this.”

Bucky shrugs, focused suddenly and exclusively on his nails. “Yeah, well. I kinda stopped thinking it, but, um, the unpacking…” He trails off, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry. ‘S stupid.”

“Buck,” Steve says gently, “baby. You’re my whole world, you know that?” Bucky smiles, but he doesn’t look up. “Baby, we’re a team. We’re a couple. It’s all… it’s all _ours.”_

Bucky gives him a shy little upturn of his lips and drops it.

“Hey,” Steve says the next day, bursting into the kitchen as Bucky is unpacking the microwave. “Look what I found.”

He hands Bucky a label maker, bulky and awkward and a pain to hold. Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Congrats,” he says dryly, “you’d be very state of the art in 1980.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Ha. No. I’m gonna put your name on stuff, because, like I said, all of this is both of ours.” Bucky’s eyes and heart soften at the words. “And you should remember that, baby.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Bucky tells him. “Steve!” he protests, as Steve winks and sticks a label on the cookies he bought. “This is stupid, don’t.”

“Mhm.” He pecks a kiss to Bucky’s lips, then types out _I love you,_ and pastes it onto his tee shirt, and Bucky laughs and expects it to be the end.

Steve doesn’t let it die. Bucky rolls his eyes and scoffs good-naturedly at him, but a few days later, when he finds a sticker with his name on his coffee mug, Bucky gives him a pointed look and shakes his head.

“You know what–” Bucky peels Steve’s stupid goddamn label off of the mug and sticks it on his forehead. Steve laughs. “There.”

“I’m all yours, babe, you already know that.” Steve winks, and Bucky giggles and kisses him, one hand soft on his cheek as he does.

“Here.” Bucky hands the label maker to him, rolling his eyes. “Your turn.”

Steve glances at him for a moment, considering. Then, smiling, he types something into it, prints it, and, very carefully, presses it onto his forehead. 

Bucky, he’s written.

“You did it wrong,” Bucky informs him, snorting. “Once again proving my theory that you’re a hundred year old man trapped in a very sexy twenty-three year old’s body.”

“Hilarious,” Steve says, shoving him lightly, “but no, I didn’t do it wrong.” Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You just never belong to anyone except you.” And he smiles, so wonderful and soft that it must be sunlight or starlight that tug the corners of his lips up.

Bucky bites his lip. It’s a stupid, sweet, lovely thing of him to do, a dumb little reminder that Bucky is safe and loved and cared for, the kind of thing that Bucky could laugh at and hug him for. Still, it plucks, carefully and gently, at the strings in his chest, pulling them a little tight.

It was just such a long time that he spent feeling so small, owned and used and objectified by terrible, terrible men, _you’re mine_ and _who do you belong to, hm?_ and _I own you, got it_ hissed into his ear while they carved him up from the inside and rearranged him the way they wanted. To be told that by Steve, the one person in the world that he wants to give himself to, softens everything around the edges, the trillionth reminder that Steve is nothing like any of them, that his life now has been reshaped and pieced back together.

“Buck?” Steve says gently. “You okay, baby?”

He realizes he’s teared up a little. Bucky nods, swiping at his eyes, leaning into Steve’s side. 

“Jennifer would go crazy for that,” he says, with a shaky laugh. Steve kisses his forehead and smiles.

Whatever Steve says, Bucky is all his, mind and heart and soul.

***

“I think we should paint this wall,” Bucky says over breakfast, the third week after moving in. 

“Do you?” Steve replies. Bucky nods, leaning back into his arms, squinting at it.

“It looks washed out, compared to the brick. We should paint it red.” It’s not much of a wall, just the plaster behind the counter and underneath some of the cupboards, but it would probably look better red.

“Okay, Martha Stewart,” Steve answers, and Bucky kicks his shin. “Sure. Let’s paint it red.”

That’s how Steve finds himself at the hardware store that afternoon, holding a can of ‘Deep Rose’ (“You’re my deep rose,” Bucky says to him, and looks rather pleased with himself). 

“Let’s get some plants,” Bucky says suddenly, squeezing his hand and grinning up at him. “For our living room and kitchen and bedroom, there’s so much light.”

Steve laughs. “Sure.”

Bucky kisses him quickly before turning around. “C’mon, let’s go look.”

“Oh, now?” Steve blanches, as Bucky tugs him over to the greenery. “I thought we were here for paint.”

“You can purchase both, you know,” Bucky informs him. Then he grabs Steve’s shoulder. “The ones that hang are so pretty, we should have some for our living room, right? And also I think the big potted ones.”

“Baby,” Steve says, laughing as Bucky pulls him along, “we’ve gotta carry these home.”

Bucky stops, smirking. “I don’t suppose we could drive it.” Penny is sniffing at the plants now; Bucky nudges Steve. “Look, Pen wants it. Are you gonna deny our child?”

“Fine,” Steve relents, faking exasperation. “I’ll get the car. The things I do for you, Barnes.” As if he wouldn’t pull his heart out of his chest for Bucky in a fraction of a second.

When he pulls up fifteen minutes later, Bucky and Penny are waiting outside with a ridiculous collection of plants and succulents and flowers. Steve wonders if anyone on earth is as lucky as he is.

“Got you a latte,” Bucky tells him, setting the coffee in the cupholder.

“I love you,” Steve replies. Bucky winks.

“Thanks for humoring me with the plants,” he replies. They’re all stacked in the backseat, placed tentatively steadily and being watched by Penny.

“As long as you don’t start naming them,” Steve tells him, grinning as he starts the car. Bucky hesitates.

“The prickly one looks like a Steve,” he answers smugly.

“I hate you,” Steve says to him, while thinking that his heart is probably at all kinds of risks with the amount of love it’s bearing.

***

They tape newspapers over the counters and the cupboards, stories from other people’s lives that get stained with red, and go to work late that night. Steve does most of it; Bucky makes them hot chocolate and DJs and tells him when it’s messy, until Steve throws a balled up piece of newspaper at him.

“You’re the one who wanted to paint it,” Steve says, faux-scowling at him, wiping at his forehead.

“You’re the artist,” Bucky quips back, grabbing a dry brush and swiping across Steve’s nose with it. “You’re doing great, babe.”

“Asshole,” Steve grumbles. Bucky kisses him on the cheek, grimacing at the taste of paint. Steve laughs at him.

“Fuck off,” Bucky says, and dips his brush into the paint, waves it vaguely over a blank spot on the wall. “There, I’m helping, aren’t I?”

“Barely,” Steve says, shaking his head. “Vertical lines, Buck,” He groans, as Bucky stripes a horizontal spot of red over the plaster. 

Bucky pouts, then paints a lopsided frown onto the wall. Steve snorts.

“You’re infuriating.”

“Love you, too.” Bucky grins at him, and Steve’s fake glare softens into a smile. Bucky’s heart swoops and doesn’t come down.

They finish around one, exhausted and satisfied and giddy and with a very pretty new red kitchen wall. Bucky kisses him, sticky and covered in paint, red-soaked fingers light against Steve’s cheek, giggling through it.

“C’mon.” Steve, with no effort at all, sweeps him up into his arms so he’s curled safely against his chest, and Bucky closes his eyes and lets himself be held and carried. “Wanna shower together?” Steve asks him.

“Mhm.” Bucky stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. Steve gives him a gentle little squeeze before setting him down on his feet in the bathroom.

Steam fills the air, fogging the glass. Under the spray, Bucky kisses Steve, stumbling and leaning against the glass as he does, laughing through it, warm, heavy air making him feel settled. Steve kisses him back with a hand in the small of his back over his shirt that has been soaked to his skin, and the other on his face, careful and hungry and desperate and so full of love that Bucky thinks it may break him open, but if it did, Steve would take care of him, would put him back together with gentle, beautiful hands. Rose colored water swirls down the drain, washing off of them easily, especially when Bucky breaks apart to rub absently at the paint staining Steve’s face.

“I’m so happy I have you,” Steve says, smiling like he’s just won the lottery or found the holy grail, “god, Buck, I fucking love you. I love you so much.”

Bucky breathes out and whispers “I love you, Stevie.” Then he wraps his arms around Steve’s neck and Steve pulls him close, so they’re pressed against each other completely, swaying a little in the heat and the water and the sweet smell of soap and love and home.

**Author's Note:**

> Cafelesbian on tumblr
> 
> I am a messy bitch who lives for comments. Also I literally have SO many tiny one shot things, should I post them??? I write them j for fun but if u like reading them I will❤️


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